August 03, 2014

Hot on the heels of the three-part series of Bob Hahn radio jingles from earlierthisyear, here's another reel full of fun ads. Produced by one of the most famous advertising agencies in the world, Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn - better known as BBDO, it's a series of ten ads (well, maybe just eight) for Lucky Lager, dating to March of 1964.

To my ears, the first two ads ("Hootenanny - Regular") are identical, and the box suggests this, as well. The last two ads ("Hootenanny - Northwest") also seem to be identical. In addition, these two sets of ads only differ from each other in that a couple of lines are changed near the end of the respective ads. This is why, although I have ten tracks posted, I'm pretty sure there are only eight ads here. But in case I'm wrong, I've included all of them.

And all of the ads are based on the same music, and, with one exception (the "Lift Top" ad), on the same basic lyric. There is ad heard in Spanish, but it still seems to contain essentially the same text, albeit in another language. There are also two ads featuring famed bluesman Jimmy Witherspoon. One features his own take on the material, at the standard 60 seconds. The other, though (track 8), while the other is, surprisingly, two minutes and 45 seconds long (the tape box claims it's four minutes long!). It's not clear to me where this would have been aired or under what circumstances.

Also of interest is the "Roaring Twenties" ad, which does a particularly bad job, in my hearing, of capturing the sound and feel of that era, and "Lift Top", which appears to describe a very early attempt to get around the problem of sharp pull tabs.